Samuel Proulx's CV

Summary

I've been working in the accessibility industry for almost my entire career, with sidetrips into bitcoin and journalism. I enjoy solving hard, interesting problems, trying big ideas, and exploring how new technologies will change our relationships, our society, our world, and our abilities. I believe that an accessible world is a better world, not just for people with disabilities, but for everyone.

Experience

Easy Surf Collective Corp., Accessibility Consultant (Contract)

Ottawa, ON (Remote)

July 2026 – present

3 months

  • Delivering web and document accessibility remediation for clients including D2L, the City of North Vancouver, and Open Door Group

  • Auditing and repairing e-learning PDFs and course materials for accessibility, with detailed written issue reports for internal teams

  • Working as part of a team of accessibility experts with disabilities providing audits and remediation across web properties and video games

Whimble Care Inc., Accessibility Consultant (Contract)

Ottawa, ON (Remote)

July 2026 – present

3 months

  • Accessibility consulting for Whimble's rebuilt on-demand home care booking platform, serving seniors and people with disabilities

  • Designed a testing strategy pairing an automated accessibility gate to catch basic errors and regressions with periodic manual audits

  • Built and executed accessibility test suites for the web booking platform and client flows

Fable, Accessibility Evangelist (previously Community Manager, accessibility innovation)

Ottawa, ON

Apr 2018 – June 2026

8 years 3 months

  • Community Manager (2018-2021): one of Fable's first employees; recruited accessibility testers and built the first 100 members of the community of people with disabilities using assistive technologies

  • Accessibility Evangelist (2021-2026): evangelized accessibility and inclusive design and testing; wrote articles and spoke at events to provide valuable content for the industry

  • Helped shape product thinking for a platform used by teams at Slack, Salesforce, Shopify, Walmart, and Amazon; Fable was later named one of Forbes' biggest innovators in accessibility

  • Hosted The InclusionHub Podcast, interviewing luminaries of the disability rights movement, and co-hosted the Disability Bandwidth podcast

Bitmint Canada Inc., Director

Mansfield-et-Pontefract, QC

Aug 2013 – Apr 2021

7 years 9 months

  • Ran a full-scale Bitcoin mining operation end-to-end: hardware procurement, hosting, operations, and trading

  • Sustained the business profitably across multiple boom-and-bust market cycles from 2013 through 2021

  • Self-taught systems administration, power and cooling management, and financial risk management

Good Shepherd Community Church, Webmaster

Toronto, ON

Mar 2011 – Mar 2012

1 year 1 month

  • Maintained and updated website, rolled out complete website redesign, responsible for newsletters and online digital marketing

Speaking

Conference Speaker

2021 – 2026

Regular speaker on accessibility engineering, screen reader testing, and disability community research

  • Access All Areas 2021: The Low-Hanging, High-Impact Accessibility Issues for Developers

  • "Disability-Led Innovation = Improved Education" — solo talk at SXSW EDU 2023, Austin, TX, on removing barriers for people with disabilities in continuing education

  • Knowbility John Slatin AccessU 2022, 2023, and 2024 — sessions on decentralizing accessibility, screen reader testing, and surveying the disability community

  • Advancing Research 2023 and Enterprise UX 2023 (Rosenfeld Media); DX3 Canada; guest on accessibility podcasts and panels

  • Sight Tech Global — panelist on "The Future of Screen Readers: Key Ideas That Will Not Serve Us Well" (2021) and moderator of "What's Next with StellarTrek" (2022)

Writing

Sam's Stuff

2024 – present

Personal blog on accessibility, assistive technology, AI, and blind geek life

  • A Guide to AI Prompting from a Blindness Perspective (2026) — originally commissioned for the Google Developers blog

  • Widely shared write-ups including AI text-to-speech for screen reader users, YubiKey and screen readers, and accessibility as the origin of innovation

Industry Articles & Podcast Writing

2020 – 2026

Accessibility writing for company and industry publications

  • Feature articles for the Fable blog, including The Real Story on WCAG Principles from a Screen Reader User

  • Guest articles for UXArmy and other industry publications on digital accessibility

Open Source

NVDA Add-Ons

2019 – present

Maintainer of popular open-source add-ons for the NVDA screen reader used by blind users worldwide

  • eloquence_64: 64-bit Eloquence synthesizer support for modern NVDA (33+ stars, wide community use)

  • unspoken-ng and supertonic-nvda: speech and audio output improvements; adispeak: screen reader access for AdiIRC (C#)

Hermes Agent Plugins

2026 – present

Plugins extending the open-source Hermes AI agent — Kagi web search/extract provider and an XMPP/Jabber gateway

aimud

2026 – present

Accessible text-based multiplayer game world built on Evennia — an inherently screen-reader-friendly gaming platform

Skills

Assistive Technology: NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver, braille displays, voice control, switch access, magnification — as expert daily user and tester, or as specialized UX researcher

Accessibility: WCAG 2.x, VPAT/ACR, user research with disabled participants, usability testing, accessible documents (PDF, Office), e-learning accessibility

Technical: Python, C#, PowerShell, Git/GitHub, Linux server administration, HTML/CSS fundamentals, automated accessibility tooling; licensed amateur radio operator (callsign VA3SEP)

Communication: Public speaking, conference presentations, podcast hosting, technical writing, community management

Education

Ryerson University, Journalism

Toronto, ON

2007 – 2010

Certifications

  • Advance Your Leadership Skills as an Individual Contributor

  • Account-Based Marketing Foundations

  • Lead Generation Foundations

References

References available on request.